Game of Thrones: Honoring the Death of the Show’s Most Important Character

This post contains frank discussion of Game of Thrones Season 7, Episode 7, “The Dragon and the Wolf.” If you aren’t caught up, now is the time to leave.

Well, I was not emotionally prepared for that death. Were you? After seven seasons and eight thousands years, the Wall—arguably the most important character on Game of Thrones—has come a-tumbling down. It didn’t crumble (as many, including me, guessed it would) because of the mark the Night King left on Bran. Nor did the Army of the Dead skate around the Wall as some suspected they might. No, it was zombie Viserion breathing blue fire that finally did the old girl in. And this loss is an even bigger deal than you think.

Before we roll on to the ramifications of the Wall’s loss, we should address that final shot of Beric and Tormund.

I am a huge believer that we shouldn’t count characters as dead until we see them actually die. That being said, Beric and Tormund were on top of the Wall until what seemed like the very end. I would buy that some of their men made it to safety, but I’m not feeling great about Beric and Tormund themselves. The section they were perched on definitely came down, right? So, either this is the mother of all cliffhangers, or Game of Thrones is doing exactly what we asked it to do last week: killing heroes.

Now, back to the Wall. The demise of the Wall means that Bran’s vision from Season 7, Episode 1—“Dragonstone”—of the Army of the Dead marching on green grass was, as many surmised, a vision of the future.

Winter has come for the southern parts of Westeros, and there’s a chance it might be the last one the realms of men ever see. Back in “Dragonstone,” Jim Broadbent’s Maester Ebrose gave a calm, rational defense to Samwell Tarly’s alarmist warnings that the Night King was coming and they needed to prepare. He said:

When Robert's Rebellion was raging, people thought the end was near.
The end of the Targaryen dynasty: “How will we survive?” When Aegon
Targaryen turned his eye westward and flew his dragons to Blackwater
Rush: “The end is near! How will we survive?” And thousands of years
before that, during the Long Night, we can forgive them for thinking
it truly was the end. But it wasn’t. None of it was.

He concluded that this is all a little bit of history repeating, because. . .

Gulp. The Wall was built by the Children of the Forest and the First Men (let by Brandon the Builder) to defend Westeros from the White Walkers. (The Children made the White Walkers too, so you should consider the Wall their apology gift to mankind.) Thanks to spells and 300 miles of earth and ice, the Wall and the Night’s Watch who guard it have kept the White Walkers at bay throughout all of history. Until now.

In other words, we’re not just seeing the latest seasonal cycle in a clash between men and White Walkers. The Great War to Come that everyone keeps banging on about will be something terrifyingly new for Westeros. George R.R. Martin himself has implied that his saga is headed towards some unprecedented apocalypse. In an excerpt from the upcoming Winds of Winter, Euron (not always the most reliable source, I’ll grant you) has a terrifying vision: “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Yikes.

All that doom and gloom aside, we’ll also miss the Wall—or at least the Eastern part of it—for all the joy it once brought us. There were awkward elevator scenes, urination scenes, and a number of other surprises. (A huge scythe!) Well, at the very least, this wasn’t Edd’s fault.